...in no particular order.
As anyone who does triathlon knows, triathlon training takes up gobs of time. Relationships/marriages are repeatedly tested, life gets put on hold, your availability revolves around your training and racing schedule.
This is an attempt to meld everything.

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Thursday, September 16, 2010

Having meant to write this soon after my last race in July, it's finally high time I write about this season that has, bar none, been my best ever - including my first season racing Triathlon in which I finished the season with a searing 2:22 at Pine Barrens. In that race, the swim was short and my run was still 50+.

While my running has steadily improved, I had gotten insanely slow on the bike from doing long course/70.3's and culminating with IM CDA last year and given that the bike represents the bulk of the race, speed here is imperative. I dropped my coach after IM CDA as my season was over and it quite obviously didn't make sense to continue to pay him. After speaking with several pros here in Boulder, I realized that essentially, in order to get faster, I had to shake things up. And shake them up I did.

I not only raced only OLY and shorter this season, but with some early season plyometrics training with Will Kelsay (Timex) and some mid-spring coaching sessions with Billy Edwards (Gu). Some very simple guidance from Billy made me find my speed again on the bike - and I wound up getting faster on the run as well. For posterity, the guidance was to include short, Z5 interval training and longer, Z4 interval training. The Z5 work on the bike was literally 1-2min repeats and 400s on the track for the run. The Z4 work was 10-20min repeats on the bike and tempo runs.

That's really it. I provided my own motivation, went to Master's swim class 2-3 times per week, and did Z2 runs and rides the rest of the time. The key here is that it worked for me. I think all too often, we as athletes (myself included) have looked through countless magazines looking for the silver bullet workout or training session when the fact remains that there is none. What works for Chrissie Wellington will probably not work for the rest of us. We each need to find our own training regimin that works.